Thai

July 28, 2010

Rice porridge is eaten all over China and South East Asia where it takes many names. In Hong Kong (and the UK) it's called congee, in mainland China zhōu, the Thai know it as โจ๊ก (joke) and in Vietnam it's cháo (the ch is j pronounced I believe) - to name a few. In it's most basic form it is rice boiled in water and a little rice goes a long way as with prolonged simmering it goes beyond tender and starts to break down, thickening the water with its starch. This transformation of small amounts of rice into big bowls of food may well be how it came about, making a reduced crop go a long way after a poor harvest. During the Cambodian revolution it certainly took this role, with the ousted city dwellers sustaining their back breaking lifestyle with nothing but a watery rice porridge. On bad days they were lucky to find a few grains in the bottom, let alone a meal's worth of carbohydrate.

By the addition of various flavourings though it can be transformed from a basic meal to something luxurious, a fine start to the day that may seem weird for the temperature of South East Asia but for some reason works well. It's salty and soothing, filling the stomach for the day ahead.

First step is to cook the rice in stock and not water and then near anything goes. Soft pork and the black and purple century egg make a fine congee, the pig and egg are again bedfellows in the Thai joke moo, or pork porridge, where minced pork is added to the simmering slurry shortly before serving and even nearer to the bowl an egg is broken in. You can choose to leave this to poach slowly in the residual heat or stir through straight away, adding rich yellow streaks of yolk. It's not finished then either as toppings are provided - spring onion and ginger are seen nearly everywhere and soy, fish sauce or black vinegar are all used as seasonings, not to mention salt, sugar or white pepper depending on where you are.

Duck legs lend themselves well to this dish as the prolonged simmering they need to tenderise provides a base stock for the rice (for other everyday congees I tend to turn to the Oriental favourite chicken powder for my stock - quick, simple and pretty authentic). The duck flesh then shreds easily from the bone, providing texture and rich strands of meat. When I eat this for breakfast I prepare the night before up until the rice is cooked then shred the meat, add to the porridge and warm through when I get up. It makes a fine lunch too and is even meaty enough for an evening meal. As I've made this as a Vietnamese cháo I've seasoned with fish sauce, if this isn't to your taste then the aforementioned black vinegar cuts through the richness well.

For other flavours simply boil the below amounts of rice in stock to get your base porridge and add things as you see fit - whether it's meat, fish or seafood - topping with whatever you fancy. It's pretty much a do what you want dish like noodle soup or fried rice.

Cháo Vịt - Vietnamese Rice Porridge with Duck

Ingredients, for 4 people

2 duck legs

120gr jasmine rice

2 spring onions, halved and crushed

2" ginger, crushed

To Garnish

Greens from 2 spring onions

1 red chili

Fish sauce

White pepper

Method

Chop the duck legs in two to expose some marrow then simmer in 2 litres of water, with the ginger and spring onion, till tender. This should take about an hour to an hour fifteen.

Remove the duck and flavourings, strain the stock through a fine sieve and then make back up to 2 litres with water. Add the rice, bring to the boil and then simmer, again for one hour to an hour fifteen, until the rice has broken down and the cháo has thickened nicely. The stock is very light so it will need to be seasoned, using salt and fish sauce and - if you like the stuff - the ubiquitous chicken powder.

Whilst this is happening and when the duck legs are cool enough to handle remove the meat from the bone and shred. Just prior to serving add the meat (and skin if you want) and warm through.

Provide your diners with sliced spring onion, red chili, fish sauce and white pepper for them to add as desired.

July 17, 2009

I'm not a big believer in fate but ten minutes before first seeing these things for sale I'd been sat researching another blog post online and seen them mentioned. Surely it was menat to be?

Normally I like a beer or two inside me before trying something random, a bit of Ducth courage, but I was stone cold sober here and these are pretty horrid looking. It's hard to see from the photo just how big these things are, they're literally 7cm/8cm long and 3cm/4cm across, a giant waterboatmen literally half the size of my palm. I gestured to the stallholder how to prepare them and she snapped off the eyes and the two wing covers and handed it back.

Whilst the first bugs we'd eaten were crisp these things had a very soft middle. First bite caused the mouth to be filled by a big squirt of fishy tasting gunk. It wasn't actually that bad though, I'd read that they squeeze these over dishes sometimes and I can see how you consider their essence a delicacy. The texture was very heavy going though, nothing wanted to break down. I kept chewing and chewing on leathery shell and spiky leg for a good 5 minutes, refusing to be beaten, and in the end I broke down the shell enough to swallow it. These things are not for the faint of heart.

Whilst I couldn't find a red or green curry anywhere it didn't mean all dishes were coconut free - one such creamy delicacy being khao soi. Following a recommendation for a local Chiang Mai dish we got this delight.

A vat of dark, oily chicken curry sat simmering on the hob. Upon ordering chewy wheat noodles were warmed through, a spoonful of the curry was poured over then on went the coconut milk, leaving a delicately spiced soup, dotted with red oil. Texture was added through deep fried noodles on top.

The trickiest bit about eating in Thailand is the lack of any Roman
alphabet. The Thai script leaves menus totally indecipherable and most
places think Westerners don't want real Thai food and so present you
with an English language menu sporting nothing but fried rice and Pad
Thai. This can leave you rather limited but at Chiang Mai bus station
the three big pork hocks steaming away let me know there was more to
the restaurant than the crappy tourist menu you was letting on.

A bit of finger pointing left me with a delightful noodle soup, remarkably light considering the contents - tender pork meat, fat and skin sat on top of fresh wide rice noodles. Unlike any Thai food I've seen before but worthy of a place on any menu, English language or otherwise.

Just up the road from our guesthouse we found the most amazing cheung fun stall. No need for a shop front here, just whack a few steamers near straight on the road and turn out boxes full of the stuff.

Chewy rice flour pancake filled with pork and peanut. A dash of meaty sauce, some fried shallots and some birds eye chillies on top left a Chinese delicacy with a distinctly South East Asia feel to it.

A quick disclaimer. I think sausages are the greatest culinary invention ever. They meat keep longer, they help meat go further, they utilise the less savoury parts of the animal and - last but by no means least - they taste great. Bearing this in mind I was over the moon to find them on sale in Thailand. I'd read about Thai sausages before but didn't realise they were quite so popular, literally on sale everywhere.

The first sausages I found were these rather fantastic pork and rice noodle ones. It's a fallacy a decent sausage has to be pure meat, whilst 50% rusk and water is bad a reasonable amount of filler helps loosen the sausage and improve the texture. This wasn't lost on the Thai folk and here alongside the meat we got strands of rice vermicelli. The sausages were heavily flavoured with garlic and ginger and had also been allowed to sour a bit, a most interesting twist. 2 served on a stick was maybe 40p.

Next up was the Chiang Mai sausage. Walking around the Chinatown market in Chiang Mai I was confronted by a swarming mass of people around a stall. Not wanting to miss out I joined the huddle and got to the front to find a freshly cooked pile of sausages disappearing rapidly before my eyes. I got involved and ended up with half a foot of dark link, like pork and red curry paste - heavily spiced and with a good, coarse minced texture.

The final sausage was the biggest surprise. By now I'd got used to the heavily spiced, sometimes sour and sometimes noodle filled sausages so when I saw a stall with a huge cartwheel of what looked like sausage balls I cracked on.

First bite let me know I'd bought something entirely different, whilst we had a sausage skin there wasn't any meat in sight. Here the skins were filled with rice, possibly cooked in stock but I'm pretty sure it went beyond stock to pork fat. They were meaty and rich in taste but just rice in texture. On the browned edged you were treated to a toasted rice flavour too. Fantastic.